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Published on: May 3, 2018
Serial position curves in short-term memory: functional equivalence across modalities
Geoff Ward1, S E Avons, Lindsay Melling
1Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK. gdward@essex.ac.uk
Abstract:
Four experiments investigated item and order memory for sequences of seen unfamiliar faces and heard nonwords. Experiments 1 and 3 found bowed serial position curves using the serial reconstruction test of order with faces and nonwords, respectively. Experiments 2 and 4 found limited recency, no primacy, and above chance performance on all items using a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) test of item recognition, again with faces and nonwords. These results suggest that the different serial position curves typically found using traditional paradigms for exploring visual and verbal short-term memory are due to differences in the methods used rather than modality-specific mechanisms.
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